My guild uses 3 Hunters. Myself (SV), Ebin (MM), Tigercat (BM).

The other 2 were always MM and BM, and this way my first raid ever as SV. I am confident next week, my numbers will improve.

http://wowwebstats.com/rgtaso33mvyvk?s=681-32945
SV + 200 DPS over MM
http://wowwebstats.com/rgtaso33mvyvk?s=44259-74313
SV +400 DPS over MM
http://wowwebstats.com/rgtaso33mvyvk?s=298560-326298
SV + 900 DPS over BM
http://wowwebstats.com/rgtaso33mvyvk?s=336607-358495
SV + 1,000 DPS over BM
http://wowwebstats.com/rgtaso33mvyvk?s=376097-396055
SV + 800 DPS over BM
http://wowwebstats.com/rgtaso33mvyvk?s=419911-440738
SV + 400 DPS over BM

Note that the MM Hunter is geared better than I am and the BM Hunter is geared less than I am. And as I said before, I am confident that with more practice with ES rotation and LnL timing, my DPS will be far greater.

SV is far outpacing other specs. I've had 18,000 damage ES on 3x crits.

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Q u o t e:


Go to the hunter forums for once in 4 years. Theirs data there

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Srsly? You really think the developers don't go to the hunter forums? /facepalm

I tried BRK's build last night in a 25 man naxx and while it wasn't the best test since I did not have any 25 man gear (until I got Arrowsong /heart) so my dps wasn't near the tops of the charts but i was still pulling around the same. I think on patchwork I got up to around 3100 dps, which by no means is great but I still learning how to time my arcane shot and realized that my call of the wild was not turned on for my pet (side note - GC, can we get an expanded pet bar or something less cumbersome for pet talents kthnxbye) so the nerfs, while a huge bummer, are not the end of the world.

I do think that Survival, from what I have seen in various posts, blogs and rants, may end up better to raid...but do I want to re-gem and re-enchant everything when my guild knows that I know how to play my class and so what if I am doing a couple hundred less dps as long as we are downing every boss and getting gear for the members of the guild that have not been as fortunate? BM is fun for me and so shall I stay. Trap dancing, however, does look interesting and should I get a bunch of gold and feel like respecing and learning a new spec, I might give it a try.

I'm still BM right now. I've since swapped mains to my warrior, but I think this guy can still provide numbers on the difference between the spec's. I'll try and get a run in on my hunter this week comparing it's damage to past WWS reports.

For the record, while running Naxx 10 last night, a good hunter friend that I have ran naxx with since the second week of the expansion was still 1st on the damage meters. How? He switched to Survival. Talking with him (and other hunters), Survival is the only way to spec now for high dps, and I intend to take his advice. I know that you wanted to give viability to the other specs, but you did it in a heavy handed way.

Beast Mastery was obscenely overpowered (I won't say that I didn't love every minute of it) and so was volley, but you didn't solve the problem you originally set out to correct, which was as I understand, every hunter being one spec. I am beginning to notice a trend in the development of pure dps classes, as in, it's becoming very difficult for the development team to balance them. Rogues were overpowered, so you wanted to tone them down a bit, an other classes, such as Enh shaman were a bit underpowered, so you wanted to bring them up. The problem now is that things didn't play out how you expected it to, despite your best intentions.

I've been playing WoW a very long time, and I know that the development team honestly never tries to screw up a class, or a patch, or anything like that, but it happens. You're never going to please everyone, because most people are stupid. You posting in this thread and other threads in the big 3 forums makes me feel that you actually might give a damn about the community, even though most of the time they're bumbling retards.

That was a long way of saying thank you for trying, you messed up a tiny bit, please listen to the people who are making claims, do some testing and re-evaluate what you want to do with the class. If you want everyone to be different specs, you're going to have to make them all equal in dps in some form or another. Unlike hybrid classes where there are different roles that each spec provides, dps is all we have. There is no "We have too many healers, I'll go dps." Or, "Let me grab my 2h and I'll dps tonight". It's either "I'm going to be 100%" or "I'm not going". So whatever we do, if we want our raid spot with soo much competition for dps spots, we have to do whatever is highest. Before it was BM, now it's Survival, and I think you realize this. Unless all spec have a 3-5% difference in dps, you will always see a clear-cut winner for the main raid spec.

*Edited for missing words.

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Q u o t e:


Clearly your response will push GC into saying he is sorry and giving the hunter class 300 buffs.

Stop posting, all you do is piss people off when you make posts like that.

Add another post to the qq pile.

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Step1.a: Hop on the PTR, provide data exposing SV buff and BM/MM nerfs.
Step1.b: GC ignores data.

Step2.a: 3.0.8 is released, complain that SV is the only viable spec currently.
Step2.b: GC requests more data.

Although somewhat harsh, this guy is indeed right to call shens on GC's post.

The funniest thing is he's asking hunters to purposedly be a nuisance to their raid (because they'd deal poor dps) just to send him data he certainly already has.

Naxx 25man - Full Clear + Sarth 25man 3D + 25man Vault
http://wowwebstats.com/h16dyppavxvx3

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Q u o t e:
How long were your tests then? When I compared pre-patch BM tests with post-patch, there were huge differences. When I compare BM spec now with MM or SV, BM still comes out behind the others. The thing is, BM looks good at first, when you can blow all of your CDs at once, but the dps declines quickly after that and never catches up.

I still wouldn't use the dummy tests as the argument that BM is viable. Look for a single WWS in a GOOD guild, where people have high end raiding gear and see if you can find a single BM hunter doing decent damage. After seeing hundreds of logs, I don't really think they exist...

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I test in cycles and treat it like a single target boss. I DPS in Dragonhawk until I'm below 10% mana, and then pop Viper until I'm back above 95%. I repeat this process two more times. It rare if a fight lasts any longer than that and usually means wiping on an enrage, so that seems long enough to me. I did this with all three trees and I also did it on both the normal and heroic dummies.

I also experimented with the specs before the patch went live. I raided (Heroic Naxx) pre-3.0.8 as BM, MM, and Survival. Since the patch I have raided (Heroic Naxx) as BM and Survival. I'm fairly confident in my findings, take it or leave it.

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Q u o t e:
Good hunters are doing fine. They are where they should be. Scrub hunters are busy qqing everywhere because they want ez-mode without l2playing.

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You might not have noticed, but the point of this thread is to underline how "good hunters that are doing fine are doing fine because they respecced SV."

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Q u o t e:
In order to lend any weight to statements such as "You nerfed our other 2 trees to oblivion," you are going to have to provide numbers comparing the 3 specs and they are going to have to be numbers that a reasonable amount of other players believe are reasonable numbers.

Real numbers are much more compelling than what spreadsheets estimate. Multiple bosses are more compelling that combat dummies.

Currently we are seeing a lot of "Someone smart posted some numbers showing Survival was the best dps spec, so I went that spec." We need to see a lot more players trying out different builds and strategies. Declarations that "I too adopted a cookie cutter spec" aren't as compelling when you are taking about potential and effective dps.

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I was one of the top DPS BM Hunters by far and my guild's WWS is ranked in the top 50 & 100 on most occasions and in the top 10 numerous times. Thus said, I know how to play my class to its absolute fullest. I was one of the BM Hunters who could pull over 6.5k+ DPS on many fights.

I will note that I consider 6.5k to be horribly broken and overpowered. It was about 1k dps higher than it should have been given my gear, ect. The main problem was Scorpid/Aspect of the Beast.

Anyways -

I went and spec'd the best BM spec there is now for our Naxx raid this week - I made it a whole 5 bosses before I was absolutely disgusted with my DPS. It was Abysmally low for the level of gear and knowledge that I have. I was being beaten by a member's ALT Hunter spec'd Survival with completely gimp gear and I was probably a good 1000 DPS behind what I should be with my gear level to be competitive with other similarly gear and skilled DPS classes.

After those five fights, I immediately hearth'd out, spec'd Survival, and was competitively in the top 3 again placing number 1 on most fights.

We also had another fairly skilled and geared Hunter who went BM the entire raid, he rarely ever made it into the top 10.

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Q u o t e:

Step1.a: Hop on the PTR, provide data exposing SV buff and BM/MM nerfs.
Step1.b: GC ignores data.

Step2.a: 3.0.8 is released, complain that SV is the only viable spec currently.
Step2.b: GC requests more data.

Although somewhat harsh, this guy is indeed right to call shens on GC's post.

The funniest thing is he's asking hunters to purposedly be a nuisance to their raid (because they'd deal poor dps) just to send him data he certainly already has.

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OH look a hunter has a dk alt. I guess you want hunters to be just as OP and easy to play as a DK is.

Threads like this are always entertaining to me, because of how little people actually understand how computer coding works. They have data they can run numbers with proper formula's. They've said things many times that their tools are many, which they are. I can think of a ton of ways they can look at raw code and math and make sure things are competitive. And maybe people in your class aren't thinking about rotations properly, or how things scale and which stats are better for said spec. I bring up an example of stats for spec's because back in the days of Pre-BC, combat dagger rogues were best taking what ever game them the most AP. Most rogues didn't understand this fact and tried to stack agi. Subtle things like re gemming have a HUGE impact on spec dps, and I'm sure the devs realize this. Also when they say our numbers show different they probably do, and it would be foolish of them if they released some of the raw data they use if it would show people exactly how to gem gear for a spec thus removing the player element.

Ease of spec isn't a very good reason to justify "lower dps than another spec"

PvE dps rotations outside of a few specific ones are easy especially in regards to hunters. Auto/Steady unlinking turned hunters into a largely priority based rotation.

It's basically

Shot A does X dmg per GCD
Shot B does Y dmg per GCD
Shot C does Z dmg per GCD

Do the most damage per GCD that you can do with every GCD you have available.

It's not rocket science.


Steps needed to help "fix" BM

Unnerf the pet scaling nerfs to their haste damage, the ONLY changed BM needed was readiness/BW and the COTW stacking changes. the FI arcane shot change is good because it will definitely make BM hunters use it in their rotations instead of just steady spam.

As far as MM goes tweeks to the marked for daeth talent can help cover any short comings.

Lucky ES hits hard enough to put survival in a pretty good spot despite the SS nerf.

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Q u o t e:


Please tell me those numbers were not at your current spec? If so, where is explosive shot?

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Look closer. I was BM that evening.

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Q u o t e:
In order to lend any weight to statements such as "You nerfed our other 2 trees to oblivion," you are going to have to provide numbers comparing the 3 specs and they are going to have to be numbers that a reasonable amount of other players believe are reasonable numbers.

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Oh c'mon..... YOU guys must have the numbers for the amount of players entering a 25-man instance and what spec they are.

I'm willing to bet the percentage of hunters in 25 man content that are SV spec is now (or will be by next week) equivalent to the number that were 50/21/0 last week.

This week I (EDIT: NOT armoried.... inspected) ~30 hunters of both factions milling about outside raid instances before their raid started.

29 were SV.

1 was MM.

None were BM.

Our guild used to have 3 BM hunters (1 was occasionally MM) and 1 SV hunter back in TBC.

3.0 dropped and we had 2 BM, 1MM, 1 SV hunters.

3.0.8 dropped and we have 2 SV hunters. (1 re-rolled another class 1 month ago, another is taking a leave from raiding but will be SV when he gets back).

3.0 was pretty close to "spec parity". Yes BM put up the biggest numbers.... but MM was close enough that people who wanted to spec that way could without feeling they were gimping themselves too much. SV then was in a pitiful state... granted. Had SV been in it's current (3.0.8) incarnation then I'm betting you would have seen the closest numbers in terms of representation across the 3 specs that had ever been achieved to that point.

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Q u o t e:
Real numbers are much more compelling than what spreadsheets estimate. Multiple bosses are more compelling that combat dummies.

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Real numbers from real raids (ours and others who I've talked to) say that hunters are still right where they were last week..... just in a different spec.

Our die-hard MM hunter went from #10 to #1 by a large margin on most fights in the space of a respec.

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Q u o t e:
Currently we are seeing a lot of "Someone smart posted some numbers showing Survival was the best dps spec, so I went that spec." We need to see a lot more players trying out different builds and strategies. Declarations that "I too adopted a cookie cutter spec" aren't as compelling when you are taking about potential and effective dps.

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Problem is 95% of hunters are going to go with whatever brings the most pain. It's pretty obvious that its SV. It's not remotely competitive. The difference isn't within 5% - it's not even close.

People have tested the output ad nauseum at EJ and other places. People have tested it for themselves. Those that haven't have taken it on faith that the EJ folks know what they're talking about and "spec'd cookie cutter".

It was bound to happen - and arguably more among hunters than most other classes. Without a compelling reason to spec "non-cookie cutter" - like the old Expose Weakness being raid wide - they will ALL spec one way. Hunters don't do anything else but DPS.... raiding hunters, by and large have their ears to the ground about what dominates at any given moment.... and they'll spec it without a compelling (ie. competitive DPS) reason to do otherwise.

They settle on one spec and stay there until it is definitively "proven" to them that another spec dominates. They are NOT, repeat NOT likely to try out other builds. Especially since anyone who read the patch notes knew which spec was taking the brunt of the nerf bat. Imbalances that are currently seen between specs only reinforces the "cookie cutter" mentality even more. It's not a secret that 2 of the specs are not competitive.

You can say you want people to test other specs all you want...... but this isn't a case of things being as close as, say 0/44/27 DW vs. 0/32/39 DW DK specs. This is the equivalent of DPS priests having Shadow and 2 Disc trees to DPS with...... ask 100 people which of those 3 will put out the best DPS in raids. Ask 100 raid leaders looking to fill a pure DPS slot and presented with a Shadow Priest and 2 Disc Priests (of slightly varying talent setups) which they would take. It's a no-brainer.

Even if hunters DID want to play around with specs..... they know that their spots in raids are very competitive (lotsa hunters out there who'd jump at a regular raid spot - not to mention some hunters are sitting now since they aren't brought along/recruited in the numbers they once were) and they are unlikely to risk that spot by playing around.

You can sugar-coat it and baffle-gab it all ya want..... all this patch did was flip most dominant & least dominant specs and pushed the middle spec further into obscurity.

I haven't played my hunter for more than 15 minutes at a stretch for the past 6 weeks and even I can apparently see the outcome of things better than you guys.

Sheesh.